The Bandage Of Social Media Won’t Stop You Bleeding Talent

// May 9th, 2011 // No Comments » // Recruitment Marketing

It’s been said before that we have moved into an age where adopting the new has overtaken mastering the old. We embrace platforms and technologies as they surface, usually in relation to how submerged we are in the innovation pool. The more time you spend on social media, the more likely you are to know something new is coming, and the more likely you are to try and integrate it into your people strategy. It’s why HR and recruitment people get involved in social media. We like to see the trends coming, and to experience the information, analysis and viewpoints of our own community.

The problem with this is that we become addicted to novelty. We get addicted to trying to get the new thing up and running. Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, Tumblr – the list of possible ways to engage talent , particularly passive talent, grows as we spend more time in this world. We have conferences on how social platforms can build brand engagement, on how LinkedIn can find us the names of possible talent, on how metrics and online interaction can create loyalty. It’s a shiny new world, and it gives us all something to talk about. And I have no doubt that there are plenty of strategies that allow companies to use social media to bring passive talent to a greater understanding of what they offer. No doubt at all.

However, this addiction to novelty comes at a price. We have ignored mastery for diversity. We’ve become handymen instead of craftsmen, explorers instead of refiners.  Most of all, we’ve become people who go out and buy bandages instead of going to a doctor. We have diverse and complex systems to manage our active candidates that contain communications templates, can tie in to existing communities and give us a multitude of ways to parse talent. And I believe that, in the majority of cases, our teams of recruiters know enough about this software to get by, and nothing more.

(I’m going to use PageUp as an example here, just because it’s easier to name a system. PageUp isn’t the problem; in fact, it’s an excellent system that almost no one is using to full capacity.)

If you have PageUp, your recruiters most likely get trained in how to do the day to day work in the system, and very little about the advanced areas. They won’t be unilaterally educated about updates or new features. They’ll be technicians, good at using one functional workflow to answer a need – the need to fill a role. They won’t be masters, or gurus, or (insert your term for the PageUp wizard in your business here) – they’ll have a fit-for-purpose understanding. This has been the case everywhere I’ve worked, and from discussions with other people in the game, it is common enough. Common enough, in fact, that organisations with strong social recruiting efforts spend more time refining their social campaigns to attract passive candidates than they do talking to existing, active ones.

If we compare the relationship between candidates and your brand to human relationships, then we are investing in looking good on RSVP instead of learning to be a better spouse. In short, we go speed dating online and never use the phone numbers we collect. We are ignoring those who are already attracted to us in favour of converting the unallied masses to our brand. We are making conversions from brand ambivalence to brand alliance through marketing and online engagement, and then rewarding that conversion with silence and ambivalence of our own. “Treat them mean, keep them keen” doesn’t apply to what we do. We foster discontent with every missed opportunity for better interaction with our existing, active candidates, and often we do it because we’re time-poor. It’s like saying  “When sales pick up, we’ll do some marketing. “ Bad advice. This is the area in which most companies can grow the most, can return the best ROI, and can make the most significant gains in reduced time to fill, cost per hire and recruiter workload in. It’s so simple that’s it’s overlooked by default.

Advanced skills (mastery, if you will) in all the ways you can pipeline talent and use PageUp (or whatever system you’re using) is a less public, less expensive, less marketing intensive way of making gains in the war for talent. It requires harnessing the knowledge of your experts and sharing it so that everyone in your team becomes highly proficient in all the aspects of the system. It provides, in return, more channels and opportunities for measuring ROI, better deployment of resources, faster results, lower time to get new staff up to speed and, above all, thicker and deeper communications channels to the people in your talent pools who really want you.

Social media has pulled our focus, because it’s public and shiny and democratic. It’s visible and engaging and fun. People like using it. And it absolutely has its place in engaging passive talent, in building brand perception, in being a brand authority and in joining the conversation about your employment offering. It’s important, however, to make it a balanced part of a strategy that mixes passive contact with nurturing existing candidates, a strategy that encourages loyalty by rewarding the most loyal, active candidates with the most attention.

And if yours is an organisation that sacrifices good candidate care and dismisses active, motivated jobseekers for trying to hook the passive ones, you run an additional risk. If you sow dissent in those who love you, your social media presences may become the field on which you reap the annoyance, vitriol and disappointment of those hearts you’ve broken or spurned.

Mobile recruitment apps for corporates are a bad idea

// July 19th, 2010 // No Comments » // Recruitment Marketing

Applications (or apps, as we now call them) for mobile devices are the new black. With smartphone technology advancing, new devices and a flood of marketing and journalism around the app market, there’s plenty of noise. Apps are the new silver bullet, the must-have part of any process. At least, according to some. Not me.

The point of mobile apps is repetition. They’re designed to be used multiple times. If you’re downloading a program to your mobile device, you’d want it to be something you use time and again. Like ordering a pizza, or logging into Twitter, or taking photos. They’re designed to perform a specific repetitive function for the user.

Which is why they’re not suited for corporate recruitment.

Applying for a job is a process which requires a one-off, content-rich transmission of information from candidate to employer. It’s not like ordering a pizza or checking Facebook. It’s often a multi-stage process that requires consideration and a lot of detailed information. It’s a sales process, in which the candidate creates (essentially) a marketing impression upon a company.

Designing an app which includes the process of applying for a job with a company would require a huge amount of information transfer. Also, as most smart devices don’t allow a user to store a resume on file for upload, the app would have to mimic the entire resume-building process. Realistically, we’re talking about an app which requires the user to input four A4 pages of information to complete the process.  And assuming the app works seamlessly with multiple candidate management systems (which is a big call, as many of these systems have very specific information requirements) you’ve just entered the database.

So why keep the app? You’re in the talent pool for that company now. You aren’t going to reapply to that company again, are you? If the company is sophisticated enough to be looking at recruitment apps, it’s a fair bet that it’s using a sophisticated automated candidate management system, and any repeated candidate applications will be discarded anyway. The supporters of this idea say the app could be updated with information about the brand and the company. And they’re right – although given the company already has this information on their website, why duplicate it? It’s additional content creation for another channel which doesn’t add any tangible value.

And what’s the value of it being an app at all? The preachers of this idea say it becomes more mobile. More accessible. Both of these are true, and yet both could be addressed by making the core recruitment portal online more mobile friendly. It wouldn’t make it any less time-consuming regarding the process, but it would mean that content only has to be updated once, not across multiple languages and platforms.

In addition, applying for a job is something which should require concentration. It’s a process of creating a great first impression. It isn’t something you should be doing on the bus, or while waiting for a movie to start. I know people use mobile devices in the home more and more (I know I do!) but that doesn’t change the fact that applying for a role requires a bit of gravity and dedication. It’s a sit-down task, and I honestly believe that giving the application process an app makes it seem flippant. It also isolates information – a recruitment-specific app doesn’t let candidates tour around and see what else you’re doing as a business. And if you include more information for a brand-rich environment, it’s like having two corporate websites that need updating. Why not just have one that you manage really well, that’s mobile-friendly?

Apps are about providing information to make it easier to do something again and again. Applying to work for a company is something candidates should be doing once, and doing with the maximum effort to increase their chances. Making it an app-driven process will make it more time consuming, less content-rich and (I believe) ultimately less enjoyable for a candidate. Personally, I’d rather my candidates found it easy and enjoyable to apply to my company. It’s part of designing the employment experience to make them more likely to connect, and stay, with the company long term.

‘Social’ recruiting isn’t about the technology

// May 26th, 2010 // No Comments » // Recruitment Marketing

Recruiting is about people. It’s about human interaction – people identifying with a story, with an idea, with a culture. It’s about creating a common perception that’s driven by people, and related to their social habits. Technology facilitates that, but it certainly doesn’t replace it.

So while we talk about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and their web-based friends, we’re failing to discuss a fundamental part of the concept – those channels are only as good as the people using them. Not from a skill perspective, but from a content perspective. Who is managing your interaction? What is the purpose of it – to land a candidate or to build the brand?

When we talk about candidate management systems and CRM systems for talent acquisition, we’re replacing human interaction with technology. We’re substituting human connection for reliability, for a consistent experience.  Yes, every candidate gets a response when they apply, but it’s not from a person – it’s from a program. When we adopt systems that search online for social media profile information, are we using technology to spy on people, or to replace our ability to evaluate humans without going through their online personas? Is every communication in line with the employment brand?

As a community of people whose profession is talent, finding and engaging people is what we do. More than ever, technology delivers us opportunity and risk. Ensuring that our communications, regardless of the media, are clear, are going to be interpreted the way we expect them to be, and are in line with the brand and our values as a business, is going to have a more positive impact than being on fifty new social media platforms and using them all randomly.

Get the voice of the brand right. Make it something people want to listen to and engage with first, and then adopting new channels, new strategies and new media becomes easier to manage, and more lucrative.

Generating Names Or Making Connections?

// September 23rd, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Employment Branding, Recruitment Marketing

This morning, I saw an email offering to teach recruiters how to identify talent using Facebook, Twitter and a few other social networks, by doing site x-rays for search terms. It’s not a bad way to identify what people do for a job, assuming they’ve put that in their information. Here’s my problem – those people aren’t candidates. They aren’t looking for you. And in finding (and potentially approaching) them through a technological means, are you putitng your brand at risk?

Internal recruiters are the mouthpiece of a brand, not just an opportunity. When you’re in-house , your job isn’t just to fill a role, but to add to an existing team that’s already a part of your business. There’s a fundamental difference between agency recruiting and in-house recruiting. In house, you see your mistakes every day. Your bad placements are there, being performance managed or managed out, and it sticks to your reputation. No one within the business remembers the names of their agency recruiters with the same tenacity that they remember the guys sitting down the hall.
Which means in-house, you’re recruiting for a culture, not just the job itself. You know the culture better than anyone else, and so it’s a massive part of what you’re looking for. You know the fit you need for the team. You know your value proposition. And you know your brand, and how valuable that is in market, because it’s what gets people to love you, or leave you.

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The Key To Recruiting on Twitter

// September 22nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Recruitment Marketing

As mass-media outlets everywhere start to talk about (or ridicule) Twitter, it’s interesting to watch the marketing applications begin. Whether it’s auto DMs (which can be annoying) or just the sell-sell-sell of repeated postings, the desire for people to use Twitter to generate an income, a sale or a purchase is becoming really keen. And given the space I work in, it’s hardly surprising that I can see recruiters moving in for the kill.
So here’s a tip. Just a little one. Stay human.

Twitter at its best is about interpersonal connection. I chuckle whenever I read that Twitter, Facebook et al are about narcissism. It’s not narcissism to believe that you have an opinion worth sharing. Five minutes interacting on Twitter shows you that Twitter’s real value isn’t about broadcasting. It’s about connecting, about finding a balance between listening and talking. To broadcast on Twitter is to tacitly assume that your audience has nothing to say of interest to you. Don’t we already have enough websites that can do that?

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Want To Engage Gen Y? Start By Calling Them Something Else

// September 22nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Employment Branding, Recruitment Marketing

I’ve spent this week introducing our managers to our graduate marketing program. It’s a program that has been hand-built by me and a very dedicated team of designers and developers. It’s frankly awesome.
In nearly every meeting, these managers (who are largely technical types) have asked if the way we communicate – personal, informal, friendly – is a “Gen Y thing”. Because, you know, Gen Y love that stuff. And at every opportunity, I’ve taken pains to point out that no, it isn’t. It’s a people thing.
The people we want (and I suspect this applied to you too) don’t like being generalised. They don’t like being categorised. They like being individuals. They like having this recognised, too. People respond well to being singled out for the things they pride themselves on. In other words, people respond well to being recognised as a person.
Those Generation Y’s that managers are always complaining about have a reasonable point to make. As long as you keep seeing them as a generation, and not as individuals, you’re alienating them. Every person within generation Y has the same level of individuality in communication style, work preference and background as anyone else. They are as susceptible to cold, hurt, excitement, honesty and fear as anyone else.
Generations are a way of making broad classifications. They are a way of seeing. And every way of seeing, is a way of not seeing. If you continue to define people by their generation, you paint them with the ‘average’ of their collective public perception. You brand them based on the collective psychological impression the chronological group they belong to has given you. In short, you marginalise their humanity right from the start.
Need something to call your new graduates? Try their names.

Your Candidates Have Brains

// September 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // Employment Branding, Recruitment Marketing

It’s seen as something as a disadvantage by recruiters that the real superstar potential hires for any role are smart, savvy and often analytical. It makes them harder to sell on a story which isn’t backed up by a reality. I’m not having a go at recruiters – most salespeople would probably prefer an audience that didn’t require quite so much truth and hard work to convince.
And therein lies the problem.
Having a really good employer brand doesn’t work unless it’s true. Unless it’s honest. Unless you can prove it.
The greatest recruiter I know brought me into this job, and when she left, a party was held. The CEO made a speech, praising her efforts in building an internal recruitment function of nearly 30 people in three years. Towards the end of his speech, he said “Sometimes the business has had to reach in order to meet the expectation you’ve created. Your passion for working here is evident in how you talk about the business when we go to market.”
As nice a message as this is from your CEO when you leave, it paints a real problem. If the message is better than the reality, you’re creating an expectation in market that you can’t meet. It’s an expectation that will see candidates leave quickly once they realize the story isn’t going to come true.Not only will they leave ; they’ll tell their friends and colleagues how badly you delivered, and you’ll have to work progressively harder to get the right people.
If you’re going to talk to people who are interested in working for you, why not tell them the truth? Not Marketing’s truth, but the real, actual truth. Tell them the warts-and-all side of the job. Because (and this is provable across nearly every market) people remember the honesty. Respect the intelligence and observational power of your candidates, and you’ll see them become long-term employees.